Handmade Sweets

Oh my goodness, how life has gotten away from me these last couple of months! Between four kids and their busy schedules, my husband traveling for work and more glorious orders than I know what to do with (because, let’s face it, it’s hard to say no!) I’ve been too busy to write.

But here I am.

This past week was one of those weeks that I adore… with nothing but the most fun projects on my plate. If you know me, you know that I love the beautiful, elegant, feminine, detailed and clean designs the very most. So a week full of these types of orders brings me great joy.

There was one cake in particular this week that I couldn’t get enough of.

Isn’t she a beauty?

The precision of the elegant striped bottom tier appealed to all my senses. I used my upside down method (similar to this video) to create the most perfect seamless stripes.

In order to create stripes of similar thickness in both colors, I rolled out long strips of each color and then laid them side by side and rolled them simultaneously. This gives a smooth, flat appearance on the tier. Perfection.

The elegant monogram encircled with black pearls on the top tier and the gold pearls around the bottom tier added a touch of class.

What is it about a gorgeous monogram that can bring anything to the next level? The way the swirled gold “M” catches the light…

The coral and gold floral arrangement wrapping gracefully around the middle of this cake adds a beautiful change in texture and a gorgeous pop of color. The gold leaves and centers create a bit of elegance and help to blur the line between naturalistic and whimsical.

The clean lines on this cake are so pleasing to the eye, and the sugar on the board at the base of the cake adds a bit of sparkle to complete this design.

Every once in a while, a cake is born in my bakery that makes me feel especially satisfied… this is one.

I hope you love this cake as much as I did.

On another note…

If you would love to know exactly how I created the striped bottom tier, I will consider creating a video tutorial for my YouTube channel. Please leave me a comment below and let me know!

I’ll admit, I’ve been feeling a bit confused lately, my friends! I want to know just who my audience is.

Are you a cake decorator watching videos and reading blog posts for fun? Are you watching or reading them to learn? Are you someone who just enjoys beautiful photos? Are you someone who just loves those mesmerizing cake and cookie videos floating around online?

Please let me know who you are, so that I know what to create for you and how.

When a return customer contacted me to order a cake for his wife, I was thrilled because, as I told him, I love making grown-up girl celebration cakes! He then told me about his wife’s love for shoes and I knew this would be a fun one.

I had just one week prior seen an amazing magnetic shoe mold via a YouTube video and had to pull my finger away from the purchase button about three times, reminding myself that I had no immediate use for it. Side note: does anyone else find humor in the fact that I had to use self control not to buy a shoe mold?? That is a true cake decorator for you! I will count my husband lucky (and we won’t discuss my handbag addiction). 😉

Anyway, I immediately jumped back online and grabbed the shoe mold that had been my heart’s desire. When it arrived, I eagerly sliced open the box and ran downstairs to my bakery, and it only took me one wasted try before I found success!

Isn’t that a seriously gorgeous, shiny, smooth piece of chocolate “designer” footwear? I added the edible jewel for more wow, and I’m really not sure if I wanted to eat it or wear it! Hopefully my customer felt conflicted in the same way.

I then created a “shoebox” cake in a similar manner to how I created last week’s chocolate box cake (you can watch the video here), but with modeling chocolate since my customer is not the biggest fan of fondant. I did a 50/50 mixture of modeling chocolate and fondant only for the top panel in order to be able to paint the logo on the top (food coloring beads up on modeling chocolate).

I used the fabulous wafer paper rose tutorial from Cakeheads.com to add a beautiful detail next to the shoe box. I printed my wafer paper two shades of purple using my edible printer.

While I could definitely get lost in a good stationary store, that is not what this post is about.

I really wanted to talk about the edible kind… frosting sheets! Wafer paper! Because the two make me just as giddy as (if not more than!) a brand new pad of pretty note paper.

Let’s be honest… when you think of edible images, you think of something like this…

Source: http://order.cakes.com

(Which is great! And also how grocery stores are able to charge what they do.)

In my time as a cake designer, I have really evolved in my thinking toward edible images and edible ink printers. I have graduated from feeling slightly embarrassed about owning an edible printer (feeling like maybe I am “cheating”) to loving every minute of it and always looking for opportunities to use it.

Why?

Because I have begun seen far beyond the colorful happy birthday sheet cake image, the simple Super Why image and the edible photo of the birthday child. I have seen the endless possibilities and the stunning details to be created using printed images and patterns!

Here is where it all began…

This was one of my first cake orders, and it was a little terrifying! My customer wanted a Brad Paisley guitar cake. I mean, paisley!?!?

But then I had an idea… and did a little online searching before running across the street to our grocery store to have them print this glorious paisley image. And the wow! People were even more impressed than I thought they would be!

So I began to dabble more…

And started to use images and printed patterns to enhance smaller details on my cakes.

Even going so far as to use printed wafer paper to decoupage, as in the top tier of my July 4th cake!

I literally found an old copy of the Declaration of Independence, printed it on wafer paper and stuck pieces of it all over my cake… and that tier is one of my proudest.

It wasn’t until my polka dot cake that I finally let go of my inner struggles with using this simple medium.

One of the cake designers that I admire most shared this cake to her page, and I couldn’t help but notice a comment on the post. Another cake decorator said something along the lines of “Well, it doesn’t look very difficult – just printed paper on a cake”. Which is true, and it was what I had been afraid of people thinking when she had first shared it… and her comment left me staring at my computer screen in confusion and embarrassment.

But then the wonderful cake designer replied to the comment. I don’t remember her exact words, but she basically responded that of course it was printed, but that it didn’t matter… and that a person knowing how to use their creativity, tools and resources to create something beautiful that makes people happy is a great talent in itself.

You cannot imagine what this did for me as a cake designer! I felt that I had been freed from everything that held me back from being proud of my cakes. No more secretly wondering if I had much talent beyond my tools. I was able to acknowledge the creativity and talent that it took to come up with an idea, seek out the tools and successfully create the cake. And I felt free to just have fun.

And now I happily seek out opportunities to add these unique touches to my cakes!

I am thrilled to have so many different mediums available to me, and I revel in the time spent discovering new ways to use them.

This week a lovely couple celebrated their union in a gorgeous setting in Golden, Colorado, and I was so amazingly lucky to create their wedding cake!

As I walked into the venue, the gorgeous and romantic setting took my breath away for a moment. With stunning iris details everywhere and an atmosphere of pure excitement and happiness, I had the cake decorator moment… the one that is a perfect mix of relief and excitement – the one where I knew my cake was a success and would fit right in to this beautiful setting.

This buttercream cake started with a design that the couple loved by Cake My Day, and evolved from there with some color and detail changes, as well as an added tier.

It contained four tiers, each sized at 12 inches, 9 inches, 6 inches and a 4 inch anniversary/honeymoon tier, and stood over 22 inches tall with the gumpaste peony-style fantasy flower on top. The silver leaf edges on the flower added that special something.

The lone iris tier was an eye catcher for sure, with it’s gorgeous color, edible diamonds and piped scroll design.

The bottom tier was a labor of love… nearly 38 inches around of handmade fondant ruffles.

I enjoyed every moment of this cake! Wishing the very best and many years of true love to Erik & Allie!

The only thing more eye-catching than a beautiful sugar rose is a miniature sugar rose. Anything tiny is bound to be adorable… Which is why tiny edible things attached to cakes are always such a crowd pleaser!

For this stunner of a vintage rose baby shower cake, I needed mini roses. And I needed a LOT of them.

I searched high and low on social media, desperate for the simplest version of a mini rose tutorial that I could possibly find. I needed the fewest pieces, the least amount of supplies and the quickest assembly. I knew that if I didn’t find this, I was in for hours of tedious (as in, even too tedious for ME) work.

So I decided to create my own method. I played and fussed for close to an hour and came up with a perfect and simple method for tiny and quick, yet adorable, mini roses.

In fact, I had so much fun, I made even more of them for the coordinating cake pops. That was 135 roses in all… In just over two hours!

This turned out to be the perfect way to wow (literally – this is what people most often say when they view this cake!) without as much work as anyone would expect.